Queenslanders For End Of Life Legal Options

Telehealth and VAD

The Use of Telehealth for VAD is Banned - by Australian Federal Parliament Legislation

To access VAD here in Qld, according to the requirements set out in Section 10 of our Qld VAD law, the person must be terminally ill, and the person must be in intolerable suffering. So most would argue, life is pretty brutal for the person concerned.

But every Queenslander applying for VAD - cannot at any stage use any electronic means of communication (a carriage service) as part of their VAD application process, or to access VAD counselling, or to access any VAD support services. No, sorry, all electronic forms of communication are banned from the VAD process. Instead you need to have face to face conversations for each and every single step of the process.

So no, in spite of Telehealth being used far and wide, during and since the COVID pandemic, using Telehealth for the VAD process is banned. Yes, in 2024 it’s banned people!

This absurdity is caused by our federal parliament and a piece of 19 year old federal legislation called the “Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Material Offences) Act 2005” which prevents the use of Telehealth for VAD. To see this modern piece of legislation on the Federal Govt’s legislation website click here.

So everything is fine and dandy in our bigger cities, and especially so in inner city Brisbane, you can catch an Uber or Didi to your face to face VAD appointments. Or the clinicians can easily come to your home.

However if you live in regional or worse, remote areas of Qld, life is not so easy, for the person who needs VAD, or their families, or their clinicians. What do you do if you live in Thargomindah? Or Windorah? Or Bedourie? Or Boulia? Or Normanton? Or Bamaga? Or the thousands of other remote small towns, and properties of our vast state of Qld?

These people are put through the heartbreak of travelling long distances in agony to meet their clinicians. The compassionate and convenient use of Telehealth by VAD clinicians is banned. Banned by our Canberra mates.

But wait you may ask - maybe our mates in Canberra don’t realise it. Er no. Not for the want of trying anyway. Many have tried to get the attention of the current Albanese Labor Government to attend to this issue.

For a start Kate Chaney, MP, Federal Member for Curtin, tried to remedy this on 12 February 2024. Kate Chaney introduced a Private Member’s Bill into federal parliament to fix this travesty. Here are the details:

  • For Kate Chaney’s amendment bill which was called the “Criminal Code Amendment (Telecommunications Offences for Suicide-Related Material – Exception for Lawful Voluntary Assisted Dying) Bill 2024”, click here.
  • For Kate Chaney’s explanatory memorandum click here.
  • For Kate Chaney’s speech to parliament click here.
  • For Kate Chaney’s media statement on VAD and Telehealth click here.

And that’s not all. It was not only Kate Chaney attempting to fix this issue. Go Gentle Australia, along with 19 other medical, legal, and policy organisations called for this to be fixed on 31 July 2024. For the “Joint statement: Electronic communications must be available for voluntary assisted dying” click here (from the Go Gentle Australia Policy Library).

Kate Chaney’s attempt to amend the “Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Material Offences) Act 2005” failed.

The call for remedy and action from the 20 eminent Australian medical, legal, and policy organisations in the Joint Statement above failed.

We believe some of the official accounting of what happened to Kate’s bill, was the Bill was withdrawn from the Parliament in accordance with standing order 42.

Now what does that mean exactly? It makes it sound like Kate or someone else withdrew the Bill maybe? Wrong. They don’t make it easy in federal parliament to understand their procedures - specifically standing order 42 - but we found it eventually at this webpage which details “Chapter 9 of the House of Representatives, Powers, Practice and Procedure”:

Under standing order 42 the Clerk removes from the Notice Paper any item of private Member’s business which has not been called on or which has been interrupted under standing order 41 and not re-accorded priority by the Selection Committee, for eight consecutive sitting Mondays.

We think this means that if the Albanese Labor Govt (due to its having the majority in the House of Representatives) doesn’t take any action to move the Bill further along, within 8 consecutive Mondays, the Govt flushes it down the toilet. (We suspect the real problem was both sides of Parliament were all too busy in the Qantas Chairman’s lounge lobbying to get their economy class seat allocations ungraded, to even worry about any Private Members Bills, let alone the agony suffered by remote and regional Australians who are terminally ill.)

So that’s the definition of our Albanese Labor government’s careful and compassionate consideration of the plight of regional and remote VAD patients travelling in agony over interminable distances here in Qld.

There are apparently no plans by anyone in Federal Parliament to fix this travesty before the next election. Way to go Canberra!

A federal election is due to be held before next May - 2025. Next May will be about 15 months after Kate Chaney tabled her Private Members Bill attempting to enable Telehealth use for VAD clinicians and their patients.

So between now and this next election, please:

  1. Investigate where your federal member stands on the issues specifically detailed in Kate Chaney’s Telehealth and VAD related Bill: Do they, like the Albanese Labor Govt house majority has shown, believe that terminally ill Queenslanders with less than 12 months to live, should have to travel long distances in agony to obtain VAD support and services?

  2. And perhaps you could also try asking the people running against your federal member, where they stand on this issue of Telehealth for VAD purposes as well.

  3. And lastly, please treat your political aspirants for the next term of federal parliament, with as much care and compassion as the current House of Representatives majority are showing for our regional and remote Queenslanders trying to access VAD!

For the record, we do not believe for one minute that the Dutton Liberal-National Coalition minority would show more care and compassion on the Telehealth use for VAD issue. We believe they would show even less than the Albanese Labor Government. But its hard to show less than zero, isn’t it?

For an illustration of LNP “values”, we would like to point you to one of the excellent resources at the “Canberrans for a Good Death” website. They ran a candidate survey for the recent Oct 2024 ACT elections. Their content is worth a read. The cartoon at the bottom of the page is especially clever and funny - truly enlightening work. Click here for the Candidate Survey results on their website.

Please do your own homework and due diligence, and then go and vote - with care and compassion. 😉

And if you are especially lucky and live in a “marginal” federal electorate, your vote at the next federal election may be much more powerful than you think. You may get to decide who runs the country for the next 3 years. Don’t be afraid to exercise that power.

Did you know?

Did you know that the Voluntary Assisted Dying Conference 2024 (VADCON24) was recently held on 28-29 October 2024 here in Brisbane? It was co-hosted by Go Gentle Australia and VADANZ.

It was heartening to see that in-person tickets for the conference were sold out, and a wait-list was required. Such high demand is a great sign.

It was inspiring to see that there is an awards ceremony as part of the conference.

Congratulations to the VADCON24 Award winners:

  • Go Gentle Individual Community Champion Award - Fiona Jacobs
  • Go Gentle Organisational Community Champion Award - Totara Hospice
  • VADANZ Innovation Award for Emerging Research in Voluntary Assisted Dying - Jessica Young
  • The Dr Rodney Syme Medal, awarded by @dwdvictoria - Ian Wood

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBqffETPRll/?img_index=1